Ice
by GilraenDernhelm
Summary: Fluffy and mostly plotless little sequel to 'Remain Nameless' in which Arya and Jaime keep warm in a cold place.
1. Chapter 1

Arya grunted as the stag's entrails came spilling out of the hole that she had sliced in its stomach; guts cascading off the work table into a bloody pile at her feet. The hole steamed gruesomely in the freezing air, and for a moment that she would later be ashamed of, Arya wished that she were indoors instead of beside the house in her shirt sleeves; stabbing at a dead animal. But it couldn't be helped. The stag that she and Jaime had caught the day before could easily feed them for a month if they took good care of it, and that meant skinning it, cleaning it, chopping it up and storing it in the little shed out back before it started to rot.

Of course Jaime had had different (stupid) ideas about the way the stag should _really _be prepared, and they'd had a titanic disagreement on the issue which had culminated in Jaime's storming away from her and declaring that he would catch himself some bloody _fish_ for supper, since the stag would be rotted away by nightfall if she kept doing what she was doing. She had shouted after him that he was welcome to eat as many stupid fish as she wanted: _she _was eating venison, and would _not _share it with him when he asked her to (and he _would_ ask her to), and Jaime had shouted over his shoulder that she was a stubborn little shit who deserved every chilblain that was coming to her.

It only took Arya a few minutes to realise that he was right. It was terrifyingly cold, and her hands, red with both ice and blood from the stag, were already beginning to show tell-tale signs of red, freezing pain. Still, she would not put gloves on. If Jaime returned before she was finished, she would not give him the satisfaction of knowing that she had actually listened to him. _She _was winning this fight, or losing all her fingers in the attempt.

Arya drove her knife beneath the stag's skin and began to remove it; tearing rather harder than was necessary as she remembered, for the hundredth time, that she and Jaime had done little else but fight since the day that they had met, and that things hadn't changed much since leaving King's Landing for the Land Beyond the Wall. Fighting was what they did. It kept them warm; it was an amusing way to pass the time; and apologising (or refusing to) beneath the coverlet of wolf pelts every night was fucking indescribable.

Sometimes, however, the thought of the sheer amount of fighting that they had done since their arrival beyond the Wall was enough to make Arya want to bury her head in the snow and never come out again.

Choosing where to build the fucking _house_, for instance. Jaime had wanted to ensure a good view of surrounding country and a degree of immunity to potential attack by constructing the house on a hill. Arya, however, had favoured an icy plane on the edge of a lake with vast forests on the other side: close enough to fresh water and food, far away enough from constant wight attacks, plenty of places to hide should the need present itself, and absolutely no chance of an enemy sneaking up on them.

'We'll be far too exposed,' Jaime had told her as they stood on the edge of the latter location.

'We'll be far less exposed than living on top of a hill,' Arya had snorted.

'_Nothing _is less exposed that living on top of a hill!' Jaime had stormed.

'Is that so?' Arya had replied.

Jaime had taken a deep breath, then, and had proceeded to explain it to her as though she were a child:

'There's a good view from all sides, AND it's harder to attack,' he had said, 'and the enemy's out of breath, and being pelted with arrows and boiling oil by the time they get to the top.'

'Exactly how big is this castle – I mean, house – that you're planning on building?' Arya had mocked.

'Your lack of battle experience is starting to show, Lady Stark,' Jaime had replied; turning red.

'I have _plenty_ of battle experience, _Ser _Jaime!' Arya had snapped; turning red too.

'And what _is_ that _experience_?' Jaime had demanded.

'I was that bastard Aegon's sword shield through every siege and every battle of the Targaryen conquest!' Arya had declared.

'Which lasted how long?' Jaime had enquired.

That had made Arya hesitate, and curse inwardly.

'A year,' she had mumbled.

'So in fact you have only a _year's _battle experience,' Jaime had smiled.

'Yes, but –'

'I have thirty. So you should listen to me.'

Arya had stared briefly at her boots; not enjoying being wrong.

Then she had decided to hit back.

'Were you on the battlefield for every one of those thirty years?'

Jaime's face had fallen at that.

'Well, not exactly –'

'In fact, one might even argue that for a good three-quarters of those thirty years, you were either standing outside a room guarding the king, or sitting inside a room ruling the Westerlands.'

'I have commanded armies, Lady Stark. All you've done is make sure Aegon didn't get himself killed earlier; which was no great favour to anyone, was it?'

Arya had been struck dumb for an instant, before clouting him in the face and trying to restrain herself from stabbing him instead.

'How _dare _you speak to me like that?'

'Have I said something untrue?'

'You've said something stupid! And cruel, and UNFAIR!'

'Perhaps, but you're still wrong.'

'I am _not _wrong!'

'We're building the house on top of the hill!'

'If we build the stupid house on top of the stupid hill, there is _no place _to escape to once we're surrounded.'

'What, unlike here?'

'There's much more opportunity for escape here!'

'Like what? Diving to the bottom of the lake and hoping we don't freeze to death?'

'I'll keep you warm enough.'

The change in tone (and tactics) had made Jaime pause, and silently observe her, and wait; the space between them beginning to writhe as she edged closer to him; close, but not touching.

'Is that right, Lady Stark?' Jaime had purred; his green eyes sinking into hers as she paused in front of him.

'Hmm-hmm,' Arya had replied; moving close enough to kiss him and screeching as Jaime seized hold of her, scooped her up and promptly tried to throw her into the lake; chuckling to himself as she beat her fists on his chest; wriggled against him like an earthworm and kicked frantically as he attempted one or two swings to give him leverage.

'Underhanded tactics will get you nowhere with me, Lady Stark!' Jaime had playfully pronounced.

'Put me down, you stupid!' Arya had raged.

'Just imagine what your septa would say!' Jaime had declared in a scandalised tone; dangling her over the water.

'Don't throw me into the lake, don't ever throw me in the lake!' she had screamed; kicking.

'And why not?' Jaime had asked; pulling her to his chest again; an arm around her waist; another beneath her knees; strong; close –

'The cold can kill you!' Arya had snapped.

'I'll keep you warm enough,' Jaime had said softly.

She had looked at him, and had found that her hand had come to rest against his neck; as it did each time she came down from release. Jaime's eyes were burning, and his smile was like sunlight on the ice.

'Put me down,' Arya had murmured.

'No,' Jaime had murmured back, and his lips had brushed hers, then devoured hers, and they had kissed for a very long time while the world froze around them; their fire immune to the ice for just a little while.

Arya had won that particular argument, and had gloated about it for days afterwards, but no sooner had they worked out how to lay the foundations of the bloody house that the first group of wildlings had come over the proverbial hill.

It seemed that she and Jaime had chosen to settle on the lands of a chieftain named Hrolf, who despised Mance Rayder because of some childhood insult and had thus refused to join The King Beyond the Wall in the Frost Fangs. He now spent all his time hunting, fucking and ordering the slaughter of any unfortunates stupid enough to set foot in his lands.

'You're telling us this _before _you murder us?' Jaime had laughed as the raiding party surrounded them, 'what sort of wildlings are you?'

'We tell you this so that when you meet your gods in a few minutes,' a huge wildling with tangled black hair had replied, 'you may tell them that Hrolf, son of Wulfgar, sent you.'

'Is that you?' Arya had asked.

The wildlings had laughed at her; as though nothing could be more ridiculous.

'She's funny, this one,' the huge wildling had cackled; 'maybe I'll keep her.'

'If you want your balls to stay attached to your body, then I suggest that you keep someone else,' Jaime had growled.

There had been a chorus of disdainful hoots and catcalls at that, which Arya had rapidly silenced by seizing the front of Jaime's cloak and kissing him violently; her hands, still clutching her sword, encircling the back of his head to pull him closer, and she had felt surprise, then understanding take possession of his mouth as he rolled his tongue against hers and bit softly at her lips; dragging them gently through his teeth and imprisoning her breath inside her.

Tingling all over, Arya surreptitiously opened one of her eyes, and peeped. And as she had expected, the wildlings were still there, but looking rather more confused than they had before.

'They're still there,' Jaime had murmured; his lips brushing hers.

'Should I ask them to go away?' Arya had asked; gasping as Jaime's lips moved from her mouth to her neck.

A beautiful, affirmative-sounding grunt rumbled up from the depths of Jaime's throat, and he kissed her neck a final time before finally granting the wildlings his full attention; his right arm draped firmly about her waist.

'Hrolf, son of Wulfgar sounds like a regular coward to me,' Arya had declared to the surrounding group of wildlings, 'sending other men to do his killing for him.'

'Hrolf is a great warrior!' the black haired wildling roared.

'Hrolf is a son of a whore!' another declared.

'Hrolf is our chief!' another thundered.

'Me and mine are free, and piss on all chiefs!' yet another shouted.

'What you doing here, then?' another enquired.

'Living!' the former snapped.

'Sounds like you're _living_ with Hrolf's cock up your arse, my friend.'

'And you're not?'

'Them wights are coming so regular now, I'd live with _anyone's_ cock up my arse!'

'I'm willing if you are!'

'Hrolf protects us!'

'These are Hrolf's lands!'

'Lands beyond the Wall don't belong to anyone!' Arya had roared; raising her sword above her head in what she hoped was an impressive gesture, 'any free man, or woman would know that! Then again, you lot are probably so used to wiping Hrolf, son of Wulfgar's arse for him that you've forgotten what freedom means. I spit on you, for presuming to preach freedom to your fellows and to me! I see no free men before me! I see a group of arse-licking slaves!'

There had been a brief, rather stupefied silence, followed by a predictable cacophony of indignant roars and further drawing of weapons, and the wildlings had thrown themselves forward with all the ferocity, chaos and total lack of discipline that she'd expected from them.

Arya hadn't had a real fight in weeks, and the sword felt glorious in her hand as she offered up sacrifices to the Faceless God; sacrifices that she had chosen. Jaime had fought with her; at her side; at her back; and she had found herself seized by the same sweet, magnificent euphoria that she had felt the first time that she had seen him joust, at the tourney for his wedding to Sansa; how he had turned fighting into something beautiful; how he had made blood rain down from heaven and drench the earth in Lannister crimson; how his sword had seemed a part of him that governed how the rest of his body moved, twisted, became; wrenching in and out of flesh and bringing death to what was trapped in it, and she had found herself watching him from the corner of her eye as she made corpses; hoping, _wishing _that someday she would be able to fight like that.

Jaime had stood over the last body as it fell into a tangle of fur and broken bones at his feet; his presence seeming to tear at the ice and make it warmer; his cheeks flushed with unspilled blood; his hair falling like molten silver into his eyes; his chest rising and falling and his lips parting as he breathed in death, and when his eyes had flashed up to hers, they were like sunlight on a forest floor; exhilarated; irresistible.

'What?' Jaime had asked, as Arya stormed towards him.

'Shut up,' Arya had growled; kissing him deeply and snarling into his mouth; her hands moving beneath his furs to his laces, and they had fucked right there on the ice amidst the corpses of the slain; their souls burning hotter than the bonfires they built afterwards, to ensure that the dead stayed dead.

'Does this mean I only have to kill a few men each time you're angry with me?' Jaime had asked later that evening; grinning suddenly and wickedly in the middle of an argument (conducted while huddled together under the coverlet) as to whether or not wolves were good for eating as well as for skinning.

'No, you _don't _have to kill any men,' Arya had snapped; turning her back on Jaime and starting as the wind tore at the walls of their sealskin tent, 'you just have to apologise when you're wrong.'

She could _see _the smug grin on his face, even though she had her back to him, and she was seriously considering removing it forever when Jaime proceeded to enrage her still further with additional ruminations on whatever bullshit was occupying his mind.

'I've known of your admiration of my technique for some time now, Lady Stark –'

'_Admiration of your technique?_'

'– but I never thought you'd act on it quite that way.'

Arya had pouted in annoyance.

'I don't admire your stupid technique.'

'Hmm,' Jaime had replied; his voice deep and laden with innuendo, 'I must have been imagining things that day at the tourney, then.'

'What tourney?' Arya had impatiently asked, though she knew very well.

'The one,' he had purred, 'where you were so overcome by my great good looks and sparkling personality that you fainted when I crowned you Queen of Love and Beauty.'

'I was _pretending _to faint!' Arya had exclaimed.

'So you say, and I still don't believe you,' Jaime had laughed.

'I _was_!' Arya had insisted.

There was a brief silence, a brief tension, and Jaime's arm snaking slowly around her waist; his hand resting flat and warm on her stomach.

'So…you were utterly unaffected by my performance that day?' he had casually enquired.

'That's right,' Arya had drily told him.

'So…that look of undisguised passion on your Faceless little visage,' Jaime had observed; relishing the gasp that escaped her as his hand slid surreptitiously downwards, 'you know…the one suggesting that you wanted to take me right there on the tourney ground…are you saying that was a figment of my imagination?'

'I am,' Arya had stiffly declared.

'Liar,' Jaime had _also_ declared; shifting so that his chest touched her back; so that his fingers could move further downwards to her cunt.

'Don't think that by fighting with me about this I'll forget about that other thing we were fighting about!' Arya had snapped; trying to keep her voice level.

'What other thing?' Jaime had pleasantly enquired.

'The thing we were fighting about before you started blabbing on about your technique!' she had insisted; her breath, her heartbeat, her will disintegrating as Jaime's lips suddenly kissed the back of her neck.

'Can I tell you something?' he had murmured against her skin; his breath hitching and dying.

'No,' Arya had mumbled; as truculently as she could with Jaime's hand still buried between her thighs.

'When there is a strong attraction between two people,' Jaime had hoarsely whispered, 'they fight a lot.'

'That's… stupid,' Arya had whimpered; her eyes flickering closed as the muscles of her thighs began to tighten around his hand, _gods, you're a weak little idiot_

'It's stupid, but it's true,' Jaime had breathed; his hand still moving despite its prison; his smile branding itself into the back of her neck.

'But… why do people fight if they feel that way?' Arya had gasped.

'Because it's the opposite of what they really want to do,' Jaime had whispered, and then his lips were brushing softly against the skin behind her earlobe, and she was gasping in surprise and wondering what the fuck there was in that tiny piece of skin to make him capable of doing this her and not really caring about the details as her blood thundered within her; in her heart; in her stomach; between her legs; the unbearable, yet magnetic prickling and caressing of Jaime's mouth making her neck jerk unconsciously beneath him as he pulled her closer and started to use his tongue. Arya had gasped and moaned and squirmed in his arms and felt her breath burning hotter in her lungs as she struggled weakly, more for the sake of pretence than from any real desire to escape, and felt him growing harder against her with every passing move she made, and every short, hitched, breathless breath that escaped her lips.

'Tell me I'm wrong,' Jaime had gasped; his tongue assaulting her skin, 'about the day of the tourney. Tell me I'm wrong,' and in the space of a second, she was out of his arms and on top of him; her hands holding his arms down and her lips teasing his; nudging softly against his bottom lip then lingering just out of reach and taking on their own triumphant smile as Arya watched him look up at her with a powerful combination of rage and arousal; entirely at her mercy; his hips imprisoned by her thighs; his arms by her hands.

'You're not wrong,' Arya had whispered; tightening her grip on his arms as he tried to kiss her.

'Were you wet for me?' Jaime had panted; his eyes bright with want; his body hot with it, beautiful –

'Yes,' Arya had said; leaning forward and smiling as the space between their lips lessened, but not enough for them to touch.

'Did you love me?' Jaime had asked softly; frowning, arching his neck, not reaching her, 'then?'

'Yes,' Arya had repeated; and it was true, 'yes.'

Jaime had stared up at her with what could have been confusion, or amazement, or both.

'Why…why didn't you mention it before?'

'I had confused the issue and taken it for hate, love.'

His body had been taut as a bowstring beneath hers, and his mouth slightly open, in supplication for air and for her.

'Arya,' Jaime had said.

'Yes,' she had replied; her heart racing.

'Put your tongue in my mouth,' he had growled, '_now_.'

Instead, she had brought her mouth to the same place where his tongue had caressed her only moments before; lapping gently at his skin and smiling as she felt it rippling beneath her touch and Jaime swearing loudly beneath her tongue. His cock was grinding hard against the sleeping shift that separated his skin from hers; she was lifting her hands to touch his face and caress it, and his arms were out of their restraints and around her waist in an instant and pulling her hard against him; his hand travelling from her buttocks to her shoulder blades to the back of her neck as he crushed his mouth to hers. Her entire body surged with desire as Jaime's tongue sought out hers and filled her mouth with his moans as she filled his with hers. She was tearing her shift and pulling it off and gasping as she felt Jaime's mouth on her breast, and he was thrusting slowly into her and sinking into her eyes and her body as her legs pulled him in deeper, and they had fucked until the next morning; melting into each other; holding each other; as though they'd never meet again.

When Jaime had spilled his seed inside her for the final time, and she had sobbed out his name for the final time; her body quivering in ecstasy astride his as the sun came out, she had lain there with her head on Jaime's chest; with his fingers moving through her hair; her loins throbbing and her mind crying out against coming back to the world, and she had thought once again of the wildlings, of the shadowcats, of the North; of the place that would never be safe for two runaways who loved each other; of the place that had to be safer than either Westeros or Essos; than Separation or Death.

'Should we leave before the next mighty gang of marauders arrive?' she had asked, 'Hrolf son of Wulfgar sounds _terrifying_.'

Jaime had grinned at her, and had softly kissed her nose without replying; she had grinned back at him and had fallen asleep in his arms; and over the course of the next few weeks, the pair of them had made a point of steadfastly refusing to do what any sensible person in their situation would have done; namely packed up what little they had and moved someplace else.

Hrolf, son of Wulfgar, had been predictably enraged by their cheek, and had sent two more raiding parties and countless individual knifemen to avenge the honour of his land; the latter coming back to him with daggers or arrows speared through their eyes, the former not coming back at all; and eventually, the great man had condescended to pay them a visit himself, this time with overtures of friendship that Arya had thought prudent to accept and that Jaime had rejected outright; as though nothing could be more ridiculous.

They'd fought about that one for days. They'd fought about everything that they could possibly fight about, and they'd continued to drive each other mad and to entertain notions of murdering each other on a daily basis, but Arya understood now; understood what she had always known, that arguing was the only thing, apart from lovemaking, that could render the depth of the love that existed between them expressible. It was what made her start awake at night and seize hold of Jaime and shake him awake when he murmured, then spoke, then screamed tales of dragonfire and torture and Brienne in his sleep. It was what pulled her out of nightmares in which Aegon murdered Sansa a thousand times, in which Jaqen's dead hazel eyes never stopped staring, in which the throats of her pack were cut in quick and cruel succession right in front of her; and she would hold Jaime tightly and rock him softly until the tremours stopped; and he would kiss the tears on her cheeks and stroke her hair; and he would whisper, and she would whisper, 'You're not there, love. You're here, with me,' and the dark would go away for a little while as they disappeared into each other's warmth.

But the Land Beyond the Wall was not good for him; the ice; the cold; the savagery of the landscape that seemed to swallow life rather than create it. Every day, it seemed to kill something in him; something fundamental of which the term 'from the South' didn't seem a proper description. Not that he complained of it. He never complained of it; she only sensed it; but she could not bear to ask him for fear that he would confirm what she already knew: that he hated this place almost as much as he loved her; that he blamed her; that he _must _blame her, for allowing him to come here with her; for not making him stop; for existing – because if she existed, he could not exist without her. She would have resented _him_, had he dragged her off to hide in Asshai for the rest of her life with only the dimmest knowledge of what it was really like there. But she would have gone with him anyway, because if he existed, she could not exist without him, and she would not have breathed a word to him of her newfound distaste, even if she had found the place to be less tolerable than the deepest of the seven hells.

That coming North had been _Jaime's_ idea rather than her own hardly seemed to matter anymore. He hated it here. He must do. And it was her fault.

Arya was brought back to the shock of the cold in her hands and the heat steaming from the dead stag's stomach by the sound of Jaime's footsteps approaching at speed. Perhaps he'd changed his mind about the fish.

'That was quick!' she called out, expecting a wry reply.

Instead, Jaime appeared around the corner of the house, soaked from top to toe and trembling like a man with shaking sickness. His skin was a haunting shade of blue, and his teeth chattered together audibly, and Arya would have been alarmed rather than horrified by the state of him had his eyes not been wild with…was it _fear_?

'What the – _did you fall into the fucking lake?_'

'I saw –' Jaime rasped; his face turning grey with terror, _oh gods, he's afraid, he's worse than afraid, what, __**what?**_ 'I saw – I saw –'

Arya felt the dagger dropping out of her hand, and a primal, sleepless horror take hold of her, and she was sprinting around the table and arriving too late as Jaime collapsed senseless into the snow.


	2. Chapter 2

Visions of ice, and darkness and glowing blue eyes and impossibility chased themselves across the entrances to Jaime's eyes; across the burning, excruciating surface of his skin; a quilt of barbs and daggers; his scars made real again. Arya was frantic and predictably talking nonsense as he slumped to the floor before the fireplace; her shrill scolding punctuated by the deep, warbling clanging of iron as she roughly cupped his chin and ladled boiling water into his mouth from the pot that hung above the fire. It spilled out of his mouth and over his clothing, and burned like all seven fucking hells put together, and though he groaned in complaint, Arya did not stop until he had drunk all of it; tossing the ladle aside and putting another log on the fire in one swift, graceful movement, before beginning to pull his sodden furs off; her long dark hair falling over her shoulders like liquid steel. He protested weakly; covering her hands with the freezing, aching stumps that were his own and inexplicably trying to stop her, but the stubborn little shit was slapping his hands away and mercilessly pulling off his sodden doublet; the air hitting his frozen skin like a knife on glass as the garment hit the floor with a splat and Arya began to cut his breeches open with a knife. He complained as loudly as he could, and she shouted at him; her voice sounding miles away; her face seeming near:

'If we don't get you warm – _now_ – you'll die. Understand?'

'Those were my…_favourite _breeches.'

'It's the breeches or your life. Choose.'

Jaime had to admit that dying would be something of an anti-climax after surviving the gut-wrenching shock of cold that had ripped through him when his body had hit the water; seeming instantly to become part of the frozen surface that it had shattered. Dying of exposure would have been an unpleasant death, but better; better than facing the thing with sapphire eyes that had stood on the bank; looking at him and keening with an eerie kind of disappointment, as though it could not follow. The sight had amused him almost as much as it had terrified him, and it made him laugh now as Arya's knife ripped through his smallclothes and left him completely naked against the cold.

_The bloody thing lives in a land made of solidified bloody water and it can't even dive into a fucking lake and drown me?_

_Maybe it can't swim. _

Jaime's laughs turned to splutters, and then to groans as Arya flung her cloak over his head and began to dry him off so vigorously that it felt as though the skin were being peeled from his bones; not in the overpowering, euphoric way of when he was inside her, and their skins and their voices and everything within them seemed to sear and burn together, but in the way of pain; of suffering. And Arya was chafing him all over, and he couldn't fathom why she was bothering. The cold wasn't getting any better; if anything, it was getting worse; it was _in_ him, in his veins; killing him; turning the world to slowness, and taking him back to water.

She was trying to pull him up from behind now; her hands like wildfire on his bare skin, and he growled at his body to move, and stand, and take his weight, but his bloody knees kept collapsing beneath him; quickly at first, then slower and more painfully, until he could hardly bend them at all, and Arya's joints were cracking from the effort of holding him up. In his mind, he was screaming with the exertion; with the weakness; with his own helplessness.

_I'm not helpless_.

He _couldn't _be helpless; he'd only been fucking helpless three times in his life and on all three occasions he'd had body parts mutilated or cut off (_soon we'll be adding 'frozen off' to the list, ha ha_).

Arya swore loudly, and eased him to the ground again; propping him against the wall of the hearth and running to rip the wolf skin coverlet from the bed. She tore back across the room, dragging the cumbersome thing behind her on the floor, and proceeded to wrap him up in it like a fucking sausage, so that only his head was sticking out. He tried to summon the energy to glare at her, but found himself using it to smile instead when she stepped back, removed her boots and started to take her clothes off.

'I'm not at my best, Lady Stark,' Jaime muttered, 'but if you absolutely cannot wait –'

'Don't be such a bloody fool,' Arya snapped, pulling her breeches down, 'at this rate, I'd be surprised if you can even get it up.'

'Not…true,' Jaime mumbled; wincing, hard, as she got under the coverlet with him and wrapped her legs around his waist and her arms around his back; imprisoning the cold of the North and hissing in pain as it fought to free itself; to take two instead of one.

The feeling of their skins meeting was at once relief, and what surely counted among the most excruciating of any pain that Jaime had ever experienced. The ice was inside his fucking skin, trapped in it and making it burn, and only when Arya tightened the grip of her arms and legs around his body did he realise that the burning sensation was his shivering; tremouring; _trembling_; like there was an earthquake inside him; devouring both him and the world. The heat of Arya's body was like a pinprick of unattainable warmth that seemed to flare dully, then die once more as she methodically ran the calloused palms of her hands from his shoulder blades to his buttocks, before bringing them quickly round to his chest, across his stomach and down to his cock.

Jaime jumped in astonishment as Arya stroked him briskly with one firm hand, gracelessly cupped his balls with the other, then started on his back again; as blandly as though she were a maester performing an experiment on a corpse.

'If this is how they do things in Braavos, then I entirely understand why you left,' he mumbled.

'This, Arya replied, in a no-nonsense tone that amused him greatly, 'is how angry Northern women prevent their idiotic lovers from freezing to death.'

'By playing with their cocks?' Jaime half-laughed, half-mumbled.

'There's a lot of blood down there,' Arya shrugged, 'get it warm again and half the problem is solved.'

'Perhaps I should fall into the lake more often.'

'Shut up.'

Her hands ran in boiling, searing circles across his skin; clamping down like pincers on the shivers and lessening them in slow inches that made time measure itself out in the number of split ends of split seconds between the tremours that continued to ripple across his skin, and the heat that sought to drive them out. The ice encased Jaime's body with every heartbeat, then melted off again with every touch of Arya's hands; the hurt; the damp; his strength growing less and less across minutes, or hours, or days, and by the time he was nothing but a dull, throbbing ache of half-warmth and sweat, he was sitting limply with his head on Arya's shoulder and letting her heat enter his bones without comment. Her hands on his back were more like an embrace now; a caressing certainty that all the strength in the world was holding him up, and he felt sleep beginning to radiate out of her and take him; as though he were sinking into a great light from which he would never awaken. Dimly, he felt her shifting, and forcing his aching joints to move, and then he was lying beneath the wolf skin pelt with his head on her chest and her arms around him; with sleep and warmth seducing him.

As they claimed him, he felt her crying; her chest shaking against his cheek; and he tried to pull away from sleep, to wake up again and be with her. But sleep had him already, and it dragged him into his dreams, and left him there alone.

Weeks ago, they had been out on the ice in pursuit of a fox when the blue crystals beneath Arya's feet had crumbled to dust and given way; flinging her downwards into the jaws of a ravine that had been waiting, just below the surface, for prey. Jaime had heard the ice crack, and his own heart stop beating as she screamed, and then he had felt her, clutching the ice at his feet with nothing but empty space and darkness beneath her dangling legs. As he flung himself onto his stomach, she slipped and fell. His left hand had seized hers, glove on glove; and for a moment her grey eyes had become blue, and she had been as her brother had once been by his hand; falling into the empty air, dying; a punishment; a damnation.

Arya's eyes had become grey again, and she had slipped still further; tightening her hold on Jaime's hand and flinging her right arm at the ice; trying to get a grip with her pick. But the ice had crumbled to powder each time, and Jaime had shouted at her to drop the fucking pick and to take hold of his arm with her other hand; and she hadn't listened to a word that he said; swiping again and again at what anchored her to the world; destroying it; her body dangling beneath Jaime's and writhing as his shouts became pleading screams at the feeling of the muscles in his arm growing weaker; at his absent right hand that reached out for her without finding her because it didn't fucking exist; and the ravine had howled at him, 'kingslayer, oathbreaker, man without honour, _cripple_;' and he was holding onto her, but he couldn't protect her. He wasn't strong enough.

The ice beneath him was crumbling faster now; faster and without her help; as though she had made it a living thing that now wanted both of them, and she was looking up at him; her grey eyes like wildfire; 'run,' she had pleaded; 'run!' and her voice had sent blood and wrath and fire screaming from his heart and throat and flesh, and he had ripped her from the jaws of the ice as though she were a doll filled with straw.

He had dragged her up, and they had run together, into exhaustion and relief and more fear as the ice had crashed and burned behind them; an inferno that swallowed up whole forests made of ice, and by the time that they had reached safety, or as close to safety as anyone could be in this fucking place, water had been freezing on his cheeks and on hers as he pulled her roughly into his arms and tried not to smother her against his chest; tempting as it was, the stubborn little…

Her warmth had pulsed fiercely against him; the scent of her hair; the scent of her soul; and her fists were bunching into his furs and her head drooping onto his chest, 'you should have _run_, why didn't you _run_?' she sobbed, and he didn't even bother saying something clever; her death, his failure, her brother's life choking out of his throat and making him say, again and again, 'I love you. I love you. I love you…'

She hadn't been with him when he had touched blades with the shadow on the river bank; when it had driven him back with an inhuman strength and an inhuman cold of paralysing fear and stubborn disbelief, because such things existed only in old wives' tales and ridiculous Northern superstition, and if this was true; if this creature dancing with him and piercing the freezing air with a blade made of night was what he thought it was, then he couldn't win against it. He couldn't protect himself and he couldn't protect her.

The realisation had been pure despair.

Falling into the lake, on the other hand, had been an accident. Even had Arya not told him that there were few more effective ways to get himself killed, he would still have known that going for a swim beyond the Wall was a singularly stupid thing to do. Nonetheless, he _had _fallen, and the water had seemed to pull him in as the ravine had pulled Arya in; the cold sinking into his bones and heart and mind and bringing everything that he had ever been ashamed of, everything that he had ever hated himself for, into awful clarity: Brienne, who he hadn't saved, looking at him with no blame in her eyes as she was forced to her knees; Arya, who he hadn't saved, on the night that they had left King's Landing; her face bleeding, and swollen with bruises that Aegon had given her.

_Because she chose me. _

_Because she chose herself._

* * *

Jaime started awake, weak and nauseous, to the familiar sound of a blizzard outside and the infinitely more pleasant familiarity of Arya pressed against him. He could hear, from her breathing, that she was awake, and he could remember, from his own unease, that he had fallen asleep with the sound of her sobs in his ears. He eased himself slowly onto his elbows and looked at her, and she stared up at him with not a tear in sight; her hair fanning out across the floor behind her and turning golden in the firelight.

'Why were you crying?' he asked; his fingers moving to her hair, unable to resist.

Arya regarded him softly, searchingly, and for a very long time, before she spoke.

'Did you see the white walkers?' she asked.

'No,' Jaime snapped.

Arya's hand touched his cheek and gently traced the line of his jaw.

'Jaime –'

'_No_.'

Arya's features promptly rearranged themselves into their habitual scowl, and she dropped her hand, stubbornly folded her arms and glared up at him like some petulant, if beautifully naked child.

'So,' she proposed, 'if you didn't see the white walkers, then what _did _you see that got you so shit scared?'

'A… shadowcat,' Jaime replied; trying to sound indifferent.

'A _shadowcat_?' Arya repeated; her sarcasm so devastating it was almost invisible, 'why did throwing yourself into the lake seem like a better idea than just running away? Or throwing a dagger at it, barring that?'

'I paid a lot of money for that dagger!' Jaime drawled.

'Why are you lying to me?' Arya demanded.

'I am doing no such thing, young lady!' Jaime retorted; wanting to tell her; not able to tell her; there was _nothing _to tell her; nothing in his rational mind that would convince him to deny everything that he had ever believed to be real; _it's just the cold, it's just this _place_, it's only what I cannot know –_

Arya was gazing silently up at him and looking luminously beautiful; her eyes filling suddenly and overwhelmingly with an awful, gut-wrenching despair that struck him to the quick, and made him want to demand what the matter was, so that he could make it better.

'Do you want to go home?' Arya asked; one step ahead of him.

Jaime cocked an eyebrow at her, and briefly wondered what she was talking about.

'I am home,' he pointed out.

'No you're not,' she said quietly, 'you hate it here.'

_What?_

'Most of the time, I'm too cold to be capable of something so exhausting as hatred, Lady Stark,' he quipped.

'But if you chose to,' Arya cut in; her hands glancing up and down his arms; 'you could go back –'

'I can't _go back_, Daenerys would have me drawn and quartered!'

'– you could go back without me –'

'What in seven hells are you _talking _–?'

'– you could hide yourself. There'd be hope for you. In the right place, you might even have a normal life. Nobody would know who you were; Daenerys would never find you. You could –'

She stopped talking; silenced, no doubt, by the sight of the blackness that she had just created in him as it clouded his face and infested his soul with its darkness.

_She must be joking._

_She has to be joking._

'Self-pity doesn't suit you,' Jaime tentatively mocked.

'Keep _yourself_ warm,' Arya spat; shoving him roughly and trying to get up; 'I'm going for a walk.'

'You can't go for a walk,' Jaime observed; pinning her down; 'there's a fucking blizzard – _again_.'

'See what I mean by 'hate'?' Arya seethed; struggling to get free.

'I'm not allowed to complain about blizzards, now?' Jaime demanded; still refusing to let her rise and realising, with relief, that she doubted her own words enough to let him, 'I certainly dislike the thrice-damned things – everybody does – but I don't hate this place, love. In fact, I find it surprisingly beautiful…in a brutal, horribly uncomfortable sort of way.'

Arya stared at him incredulously, then avoided his eyes completely; her own growing blacker and blacker with a heartfelt desolation that he did not believe, did not understand, and to own the truth, that he rather resented.

'I can't believe that you still think you can lie to me,' she murmured.

'Of course I can lie to you!' Jaime loudly declared; dimly wondering why he still wasn't talking seriously; 'the two of us have been doing a prodigious job of fucking the Facelessness out of you since we left Westeros.'

'So you _are _lying to me?'

He groaned, and despairingly buried his head in her shoulder. Her skin smelled like home.

'I hate this place only as much as I hate every other place,' Jaime said; kissing her shoulder, 'I have no intention of leaving – it would be far too much bother – and besides, where the fuck would I go? _There is nowhere for me to go._'

It was a rational argument, and one that he thought would appeal to her in her present state of mind.

'So you only stay because going somewhere else would be _inconvenient_?' Arya raged.

'Inconvenient and dangerous,' Jaime corrected; cursing himself.

'So what am _I_?' Arya was demanding; growing redder by the second, 'a distraction to pass the time?'

'A prodigy at making me angry?' Jaime volunteered.

'Don't make this about me!'

'Why not? It's obviously not about me, Lady Stark!'

'Yes, it is!'

'What is the _matter _with you today?' Jaime demanded; releasing her and abruptly getting to his feet.

'You shouldn't be walking around,' Arya said shrilly.

'What is the matter with you?' Jaime repeated.

'Put some clothes on at least!' Arya demanded.

'_What is the matter with you?_' Jaime barked.

'I've _thought_,' Arya snarled, '_that's _what's the matter with me.'

'Well you shouldn't _think_,' Jaime snapped, 'you're obviously very bad at it.'

'What else am I supposed to do?' Arya shouted, 'you saw something today; something that scared the life out of _you_ and made you scare the shit out of _me_ and you don't even trust me enough to tell me what it was! I thought that you would die; I was _terrified _that you would die; and acting as though nothing happened, well: I'm exceedingly sorry, Jaime but that makes me ANGRY!'

'What do you want me to say?' Jaime shouted back; ignoring the sudden glow in his chest; 'that I _believe_ in white walkers and grumpkins and snarks and all the monsters Old Nan would use to get your stubborn little arse to bed?'

'I want you to tell me the _truth_!' Arya raged.

'I CAN'T!' Jaime bellowed.

She fell silent at that, and remained wrapped up in the wolf skin pelt; looking at him; waiting for him.

'What is the _truth_, Arya?' Jaime uttered; a white sadness rising in him as he spoke the words, 'that you're stuck a thousand miles from anywhere that you might call safe, with a one-handed cripple more than twice your age, who can't even do a decent enough job of protecting you to make it all worthwhile –'

'Jaime –'

'– who pushed your brother out of a _window_, for fuck's sake –'

'_Jaime – _'

'I can pull you out of ravines and I can help you kill those wildling shits when they get too bloody audacious, but that _thing _that I saw today…I… knew _nothing_; I could do nothing! What if you'd been with me? What would I have done?'

Arya choose that moment to interrupt.

'You don't need to protect me, I can protect my –'

'None of that bloody matters, don't you see?' Jaime told her; his skin starting to burn from the cold air, 'no, listen to me before you argue. It wouldn't matter to me if you had lived all your days covered in plate and Valyrian steel. It wouldn't matter to me if you were better at killing people than all the Faceless Men combined. It _doesn't_ matter to me that worrying about you is singularly foolish; it doesn't stop the _fear_; the…the _knowledge_… of what I would be; of...before…'

'What do you mean?' Arya asked; the sincerity in her voice, and the innocence in her eyes their own kind of maiming; their own kind of maddening anger at how little she seemed to notice the parts of himself that were blackened and smirched; the parts of him that would swell and become all of him if she died; _if he let her die_; and suddenly he was colouring, and plunging on, and blurting out what his pride had never permitted him to say; the gods take the consequences.

'Before _you_. Before you… without you… without…everything. I hate it, and I fear it, and I fear myself _now_, because neither me, nor any of those shadows of me can protect you as you need to be; as you _deserve_ to be; not just from your bloody stubbornness, or from this _habit _that you seem to have acquired of running _towards _danger instead of away from it, but from what you've seen, and…felt; from this…_erasing_ of yourself that's made you think that you don't matter. It's not true, and you need to be told that every day, or you'll forget; you need to be told by someone who _deserves_ to tell you; someone who isn't…someone who hasn't…and if I could go back and change _everything_; the visit to Winterfell; Bran, Cersei, the tower…if I could be someone else; someone who wasn't _this_ –'

'I would stop you,' Arya blurted loudly.

She looked rapidly away from him and began to study the wall next to his head.

Then she changed her mind and looked at him again, and her eyes were like molten silver that a man could drown in.

'I don't…' Arya stammered, 'I don't want anyone else; I –'

She grew angry.

'Why are _you _talking this way about not deserving this or that, anyway? Has one of Hrolf's daughters caught your fancy?'

For once, Jaime didn't bother feeling hurt by her words.

She didn't mean them.

She was like him.

He walked to her. Accusingly, she watched him come, with steel in her eyes and stone in her jaw, and Jaime let his gaze wash over her; the wolf skin pelt beginning to edge down her shoulders and leave her fair, maimed skin bare, and he remembered her as she had been when he had met her, hiding on a balcony at her own welcoming feast: cold; _too_ cold, behind her shield of black ice; constantly announcing that she was leaving; constantly failing to do so; something deep beneath her Faceless mask stirring just enough to keep her sitting next to him; talking; arguing; listening; in the same way that life was drawn to a blade when it thrust into one's flesh.

Then she had looked inside him, and he inside her, and though each had terrified the other by doing so, that very act had revealed a kinship between them that was far more profound than blood.

He could see it in her as he approached; see it taking the iron from her face and leaving her with the unchannelled fire of what they had when there was no blade – no arguing – to take its heat, and by the time that he had reached her, she was rising to her feet and throwing the wolf skin pelt about his shoulders again, like a marriage cloak meant for two people: for a partnership rather than a transfer of title.

She pulled the cloak tighter around them. He stared at her. She stared back. They hadn't married before coming North. It would have been too great a risk.

Arya's hands were warm as she gently took hold of Jaime's right arm and brought it out from beneath the folds of the cloak; her fingers ghosting over the scarred flesh where his hand had once been. She kissed it softly and carefully, as though it had only been maimed a week ago, and a sudden wetness on her lips made him cup her cheek and slowly raise her face to his; her hair falling in thick, wild strands across the back of his hand as she looked at him.

He saw no defence; no fight; no shield of black ice; no mask. Just grey eyes filled with tears, and a face that he loved; a trust and an expression telling him that he owed her nothing, even though that would never be true.

'You have more than paid for Bran,' Arya half-murmured; half-sobbed her lips meeting the maimed skin once more; 'you've paid.'

* * *

Chapter notes

Valar morghulis, and that's it, awesome people! There shall be much more plot (and less fluff) in the follow-up, I promise! This was really just a little bridge to give us an idea of what living in the North would be like for our two darlings.

A massive thank you to everybody who read, reviewed, followed, favourited and left kudos! You are an indescribable inspiration!

Many thanks once again!

Gilraen


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